Arizona Public Service (APS) has announced plans to
build a 280-megawatt concentrating solar power plant in the desert 70
miles southwest of Phoenix. The Solana Generating Station, if it were
operating today, would be the single largest solar power plant on the
planet. Solana, with its thermal energy storage, will be able to
operate 24/7 providing power for 70,000 homes.

As
big and impressive as it sounds it’s only a tiny fraction of what’s
possible: According to the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy
Cooperation (TREC), the energy potential from sunlight striking the
world’s deserts is 700 times that of the world’s primary energy demand
today. Further, solar power generated in the world’s deserts could
reach 90 percent of the world’s population. Australia, Asia, Africa,
North and South America all have expansive deserts. By satellite
measurement there are 13,500,000 square miles (35 million square
kilometers) of hot, dry, sunlit desert on the planet.

Like
the APS project, solar thermal power generation is the best option for
the world’s deserts. Not only is it a time-tested technology that can
provide low cost power, cooling water from the plants can be used for
desalinization of sea water. (Energy from clean sources is a major
global need right now. So is fresh water.)

Further,
made of glass and steel there are no supply constraints to solar
thermal power generation equipment as with purified silicon needed for
photovoltaics.

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The TREC concept, known as
DESERTEC, is to build solar power plants in the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) and build power lines - a Euro-Supergrid - connecting the
plants to Europe.

TREC estimates that power would
cost 4-6 cents per kilowatt hour to generate. Transmission costs would
add another 1- 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Though solar power plants
might be far from populated areas, line losses would only be about 3
percent per 620 miles (1000 kilometers) using 500 volt high voltage
direct current (HVDC) lines. Total line losses from the MENA deserts to
Europe would be about 10-15 percent.

The solar
plants would do more than provide clean energy and water, they’d also
provide jobs during construction, jobs when built and be a continual
source of revenues for operators, even those nations hosting the
facilities. It seems feasible that Persian Gulf nations could continue
to receive revenues from the sale of energy forever after the oil is
gone.

The key of course is the high voltage direct current (HVDC) lines. Bringing them in first would attract solar developers.

Like
the plants conceived by TREC, the APS - Solana Generating Station
project will use one of a few variations of concentrating solar
technologies now being marketed. At Solana, parabolic mirrors will
track the sun and focus solar energy on a heat transfer fluid. Once
heated, the liquid will convert water into steam, which turns the
plant’s turbines to generate electricity.

Up to 1500 jobs will be created in the construction
phase of Solana. Once built by 2011 the facility will have 85 skilled
technicians. The company has also recently announced that it has joined
a multi-state consortium of southwestern utilities that have an
interest in contracting for a separate 250-MW solar power plant.

Abengoa
Solar is the primary developer of the project. Abengoa Solar deploys
CSP technologies across the world, including large-scale facilities
under construction or development in the US, Spain, Algeria and Morocco.

The
TREC initiative was founded in 2003 by The Club of Rome, the Hamburg
Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center
of Jordan. The DESERTEC Concept was researched in cooperation with the
German Aerospace Center (DLR). TREC is now working to make this concept
a reality in cooperation with people in politics, industry and the
world of finance.

If a DESERTEC for Africa, the
Middle East and Europe, why not a similar project to connect the US
desert southwest, perhaps Mexico too, with much of North America?